Ozone Therapy Benefits for Pets with Dr. Margot Roman

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

Welcome to Healing Tales.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

I'm Dr. Ruth Roberts, here to help you become the best pet parent you can be with simple, natural care that works for real life, real budgets, and real pets.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

Welcome to Healing Tales. We are honored to have a true trailblazer in integrative veterinary medicine, Dr. Margot Roman. And she has been in this world for 46 years and dedicated her career to revolutionizing pet health through holistic and innovative approaches.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 And she is a graduate of Tuskegee University in 1978.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 And after veterinary school, she founded Main Street Animal Services of Hopkinton MASH, which was a popular television show at the time in 1983, where she's treated over 30,000 animals using modalities such as acupuncture, but the nutrition and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 But she didn't stop there. Dr. Roman has been a true pioneer in medical ozone therapy for over 22 years and is truly the visionary behind microbiome restorative therapy and opened the first fecal bank for pets in 2012. She is also a faculty member at Chi University, an international speaker and soon to be author of two groundbreaking books, Veterinary Medical Ozone and The Miracle of the Microbiomes, Saving the Lives of Dogs and Cats.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Are they both released now, Dr. Roman? Or are you still...

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Well, the one behind us, which is the veterinary one, is finished and we're just going to start to get it to print. So it's the practice... Super exciting. Yeah, very exciting. And Jill Rubin really put a lot into this. She's also got her brother and others is a comic cartoonist and so she was able to use some of that. So it's got some good smiles in there. But we've got a lot of the information about how to use ozone. And we also have a whole chapter written in conjunction with Jim Bridges on the ozonated glycerin, which makes this usable by almost everybody because ozone in this form of glycerin has less... You don't have to have the oxygen tanks and everything else. So there's some really... Having a modality that is as simple and clean as ozone therapy needs to be part of everyone's pillbox in their home and for everyone in the family. So it's the veterinary one. So we're only veterinarians and we're only treating animals. But when people talk

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Dr. Margo Roman

 about treating themselves, they talk about cases of animals. So we can do the other way around. We can talk about cases in humans and if it's helping us help our animals.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Amazing.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So let's start with kind of really at the basics and let's... If you could explain a little bit about what ozone therapy is and how it works in the body, that'd be a great starting place.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 It's really simple. It's really bringing oxygen to mitochondria. So you can survive without food for days. You can survive without water for days. Maybe it's harder than food, but you cannot survive without oxygen. And as the body gets weaker, there's less mitochondria, there's less cells that are healthier. And by giving more oxygen in the form of oxygen and O3. So O3 is...

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Dr. Margo Roman

 You take three oxygen molecules,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 now four... Well, let's go with two. Two oxygen molecules and one of the electrons from that oxygen will go to the O3 and it becomes O3. So then there's a free one and it goes to the other one. So you've got this O3 molecule and of course, I have videos and stuff on this, but to do the oxygen, to get O3, it's a very unstable molecule. And so when it's paired with the oxygen, when we do ozone therapy, it's predominantly oxygen, but there's a small percentage, like 3%, that is O3. And it's that O3 molecule that when it breaks apart and becomes more oxygen, it's a supercharged oxygen molecule. And in that O3 molecule is very antiviral, anti-microplasmic, antifungal, antibacterial. And so it has a purpose of trying to disinfect the area that's there with the abnormal bacteria. So by using medical ozone, not only are you disrupting bacteria, fungi, viruses, you're supporting the body with more oxygen. And that's, to me, a beautiful thing. If you can get more oxygen into the body, Dr. Schallenberger sort of talks about ozone as being, you know, exercise in a bottle so that you're giving... When you exercise, you get more oxygen into your body because you're breathing harder and you're getting more of that happening. With ozone, it's doing that in a way that it's done medically. And there's so many ways of delivering ozone now that that's why we wrote the book is that there's so many options of how to bring that positive oxygen into the body.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 That is a great explanation because I think we...

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 It seems a little mysterious to a lot of folks. So how did you get started with ozone therapy in your practice?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Well, Marty Goldstein wrote a book, The Nature of Animal Healing in the 90s. And it was actually on the bestseller list. And he had a chapter on ozone therapy and he was doing rectal ozone. And I just basically went over it. I sort of thought, "Okay." And I was treating my horse who had cancer and he had squamous cell carcinoma in the third eyelid. And that particular cancer at that time in 2000 and in the 90s and stuff like that, if you took the eye out or the lesion out, they ended up getting metastasis. So I decided in... Well, I was 15... I treated him eight and a half years. So like in the late 90s, instead of doing the standard of care, which was to take out the third eyelid, which caused these animals to have metastasized, I decided to treat it holistically. So for six years, I was treating it with herbs and homeopathy and wasn't doing ozone. And then it got worse. And so Tina Aiken, who worked for Marty Goldstein, she said, "Do ozone therapy." And I thought, "Oh, am I in ozone therapy?" So she said, "So this guy, Lyle Hassell, who was an engineer, was designing different parts of the ozone generator. He spent hours and hours and weeks training me how to do ozone over the phone. And then I ended up studying with Frank Schellenberg and Judith Schumacher said, "Do it intravenously and with the horses, you do it that way." And so just the whole thing was I was trying to save my horse's life. And Tufts University told me he would be dead in two days. And I said, "No, I'm starting to do ozone therapy. I want to keep treating him." And they said, "No, he'll be dead in two days and you need to euthanize him immediately or you're malpracticing him." And he lived two and a half more years jumping horse shows. And to me, that was the proof of the whole thing is that... So I said, "Well, if it's working on my horse, let me try it on the dogs." So I'd start trying it on the dogs and the cats and it was like, "Oh my God, it stopped paying immediately." I mean, these dogs would come in and they either got hit by a car or they were bruised and I would flood the area with ozone-aid saline and do a little acupuncture and the pain was gone. They were just normal and it was blowing me away. And I would do it for wounds because it's... Mercer succumbs to ozone. So why would I use more antibiotics? I've never been an antibiotic person who uses it a lot, but if you needed it, I wanted to have it, but they don't work anymore. So it's like, why choose something that is causing antimicrobial resistance when you can use something that works better and save your antibiotics for the cases that you can't get resolved.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Right on. That makes total sense. And then plus you avoid damaging the microbiome by not giving the antibiotics.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Absolutely. I'm an afterthought, right, exactly. No. Is that animals, right? I was not using antibiotics. I was solving their problems. So with my own dogs,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 with the microbiome, I had ozone to use when I started raising my dogs. So if they had an infected paw, I wasn't going to use antibiotics. I used homeopathy. I soaked the paw and then I gave them ozone and it went away. And if they got into a fight with each other and someone bit someone, I'm not putting them on antibiotics. I just did ozone. Why would I subject their microbiome to destruction? And we know that the antibiotics, one course of clintamycin can knock your microbiome out for a whole year and you may never get all the species back. Right on. So it's really scary, scary and we're just throwing them out for every dental. We got to go on clintamycin with your dental. It's like, I haven't used any antibiotics for dentals in over 30, about 32 years.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So are there any risks or side effects with ozone therapy? And as a veterinarian, how do you make sure you're doing this safely for your patients?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Well, you know, I have seen very, very few reactions. If you give too much in the beginning, they can have what we call a Herzheimer reaction or have some kind of reaction. I've seen hypoglycemia, which I think is hypoglycemia because activating mitochondria, it's moving everything, it's using up the energy in the body. And you get these animals that are like, they're like, not comatose, but they're like, no. Right. And they'll happen to my horse. And it was an extremely like kind of wake up moment.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 I had decided to get his eye taken out at another location. And judas shoes maker said, give him five days in a row, give him a volume every five days before surgery. So on the fourth day or the fifth day, rather, I go out to the to see him, he can't move. He's like a goat on a rock. And I thought he must have foundered he must have done something. And I promised him if he ever had pain in his feet, I would never make him do any more. I just that said he's 28 years, you know, 26 years old. So I decided it was time to put him down because he was couldn't walk. And I didn't realize that he was he was like this, you know, he was dry, he couldn't he was like,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 so you know, we made I mean, this is shocking story. But we made, we had we had made all these arrangements, because Tufts said he was gonna be dead in two and a half days. So I had everybody lined up in the community to be ready when he because all the kids in the neighborhood fed him and they all got pony rides and all that kind of stuff. So we called everybody out to come in and say goodbye to them. So they came with cookies and his favorite kind of treats and his apple cinnamon donut and you know, all these things that everybody loved to give him. And they you know, because we were going to put him down because he couldn't move. And we you know, we moved him, I was able to move him into the barn after everybody had sort of said goodbye to him, right. And we were at the hole was dug, everything was dug, we go ahead and bring him out to go into the hole. And he literally was like a stallion running around, kicking up, trotting all over the floor.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 And and anyway, we ended up doing the eye surgery. And he, like I said, lived on the two and a half years after that. So but amazing, it impresses you when you could see something so clearly happening, that this horse was was, was, it was it was a reaction that he was having to the ozone. And I've had several of those happen, that they get so tired, but then they wake up and the cancer is gone. I was like, No, it won't be gone. No, but it happens.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 And I think that's really we sometimes forget to to look for things that aren't in the normal retinue of of side effects. And that's it. I mean, if you're all of a sudden you've got the mitochondria moving and shaking, the volume of energy that they can burn up is just astonishing. So very, very interesting.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So there's a boatload of different ways to use ozone.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So there's insufflation, there's ozonated water injections. And so for pet parents, there's actually, there are companies that will help them learn how to do rectal insufflation with ozone. So could you talk a little bit about these methods and when when you might choose to use them?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Well, there's so many different ways to use an ozone generator. And that's one of the reasons I prior to closing down with the pandemic that have one of these in the in the building, especially if we couldn't get into veterinary clinics, you can use it to sterilize water, you can use it to sterilize PPE, you can use it to make water and so pause, you can clean out wounds, you could, there's so many ways you could home care for your animal at home. And, and that's why, you know, having one, especially if we have a shortage of medications and stuff, we should have these in our home. But rectal insufflation is the easiest thing to just do it rectally. You can also get a bubbler that you could put olive oil in it and allow the ozone to go through the olive oil and then it bubbles up and it becomes ozonides and then you can put that with the stethoscope, you can bag a foot with that, you can bag a foot without that too. But you have to be careful of the gas. Ozone gas is very lung irritating. And that is why the FDA in 1935 said it's a toxic gas and has no medical use. They will not retract that because they can't make money on it. Because the ozone generator was created by Nikola Tesla and in the late 1800s and so they can't, you know, to create a new patent for it and somebody make a lot of money for it, it, it can happen but it's not going to be as easy because it's, it's been out there for so many hundred, almost over a hundred and something years. So the idea of how to use ozone in

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Dr. Margo Roman

 different ways, here in suflation that can be used for bagging. You can make ozonated water and you can drink that. You can use, make ozonated water and wash wounds or give baths with that. You have an animal that has bad skin and you want to disrupt the skin microbiome. You can make a bath of ozonated water. You can, you know, use it to flush the ears out with ozonated, I use ozonated saline or you can use ozonated water. I prefer the saline just because I don't want any water residue left in there and salt water is a little better than then you do your ear in suflation.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 You can do it. I make a lot of ozonated saline and I give it as a sub-Q fluid. So for giving sub-Q fluids, why not super oxygenate them and put them over an area that is having problems. So if I have a painful back, I'll put the ozone over that. If I have a kidney failure, I'll put the ozone over the kidney area and to do my acupuncture over that.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 If you have, then, then using it as a,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 you can actually breathe ozone, but it must be bubbled through the olive oil at very low micrograms per milliliter. If you chew it to where the oil is really thick and you're trying to bubble it instead of it bubbling like, it's bubbling like, so the inside is not getting coated by the olive oil. So you'll end up getting a lung irritation because the oil that hasn't been able to get to the surface of that olive oil.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Amazing. And one of the things that's really trending right now is ozonated glycerin. And you mentioned earlier, that's a way for this to be totally safe for pet parents. So let's talk a little bit about that and how that can improve the situation.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Oh, it's kind of interesting. Ozoneate glycerin was used in the United States in the early 1900s. And I can't remember the guy, but there's a whole manual that's in the Library of Congress on how he made it, what he used it for, and it got buried, totally buried. So about 25 years ago, several Japanese researchers were doing those glycerin for cosmetics. So they were using it for cosmetics because of the qualities in it. Glycerin is used for so many things, but they were ozonating it. And so they started making cosmetics. In 2006, I went over to Japan and I lectured at the Nippon Veterinary School on ozone therapy. At the time, there was one medical professional in Japan that was doing it ozone on humans, and there were none in veterinarians. So I lectured, and then the next time I went to Japan, there were 100 vets that were doing ozone therapy, which was really rewarding when they latch onto something. But what these guys did was amazing. They decided to use ozonated glycerin instead of the ozonated saline and mix it with saline because they found that the ozonated glycerin was stable for 90 days outside the refrigerator.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 And they did all this research and testing, and in the refrigerator, it lasted at least a year. And if it's frozen, they don't know how long it'll last. So you hear something that is generated. Now, I've been using ozonated oils for all this time that I've been doing it, but this is even more stable because the ozonated oil sitting out starts to melt all over the place. And it still has value, but it's not as valuable if it's kept at a certain level of ozone. What is cool about the ozonated glycerin is because glycerin is made up of two glucose molecules that the effect of the glucose with the ozone sort of tricks the cancer. So cancer like sugar, and you're giving this a glycerin that breaks down and it releases the sugar molecule and it gets ended up getting sucked into these cancer cells, which has a disguise of ozone in it. So they're finding it really very rewarding for cancer. So Dr. Jim Bridges, he went to the lecture on the ozonated glycerin in 2018

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Dr. Margo Roman

 and decided to experiment it with his cases and was blown away.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 So some of his ideas are in our book and many people could probably hear some of his lectures through the American Academy of Ozone Therapy and the Frontiers in Ozone Therapy, which is also another group that has had him as a speaker.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 But the case that really sort of blew him away was at, it was assumed, it wasn't confirmed with biopsy, it was hemangiosarcoma of the spleen. So the dog had a huge splenic mass and they did ozone glycerin mixed with saline and did an intraparent needle. Now I do intraparent needle ozone gas directly into the abdomen in the clinic. He put it with the glycerin and mixed it in and ran it into the abdomen. And I don't know the exact time, but I think within two weeks, this mass that was the size of a cantaloupe came down to a small plum and then went away and came back at 18 months and the dog ended up dying. But it got 18 months without surgery.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Amazing. Yeah, yeah. That's like the gold standard. If you can get a dog to 18 months, you're really doing something.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Yeah. So I mean, if we can get them, with ozone,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 I was talking to a cousin this morning and she mentioned a bridge to just put her dog down. And they brought the dog to me, we figured out it was like seven years ago and a year and a half before COVID. And the dog couldn't get up, it was a great Pyrenees. He couldn't get up, couldn't walk. And the vet said, "He's a big dog, he can't walk, you got to euthanize him." And I did ozone and acupuncture, gave him some homeopathics and he ran out the door and they just euthanized him like he was like 14 or something, really old for Pyrenees. And she said, "We got another seven years out of him after they said euthanize him." So if you don't try these things and they're not expensive and if they can help bring oxygen to an area that reduces the pain, so when you have pain, you have congested vessels and you don't get enough circulation. That's why acupuncture works because you're bringing in circulation, you're bringing this across, doing it in combination and putting the ozone down and then doing your acupuncture or doing your laser, you're getting super charged because you've got already the oxygen sitting there and you're manipulating the light for the photobiomodulation or the acupuncture to move energy around. It's such a win-win for everybody.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 I just love that. And it's something that the average pet parent can access and actually do for their pets if they don't have access to a veterinarian locally that is trained in these modalities. So I think that's just critical because there's not so many of us, right?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Right. And I think my push for ozone for all of these vets that are like, "I'm not a holistic vet. I can't do this." Just for antimicrobial resistance and just for reducing the biofilm in the gut if they're doing fecal transplants, they will turn animal cases around by having ozone in their practice. Once they start experimenting with, "Oh, I'll do it for this. I'll do it for that," they'll be saying, "I can't function without it in my practice." And so I ran into a vet who I had, it was at a North American veterinary conference, which has tracks on holistic, which is wonderful, but they have mostly non-holistic tracks. And this one veterinarian was sitting, his shoes didn't fit him, so he was sitting in the front row and he was trying to decide whether he should, he didn't want to sit on a lecture on ozone therapy. He was like, "I want to go, I've been to NAVC. I have to go across different campuses. I have to go over to the Marriott or whatever." So he said, "I'm just going to sit here and change this whole practice." I ran into him and he just gave me a big hug and he said, "It's just the best thing I ever learned about taking care of animals was adding ozone to my practice." So it's the kind of things that you hope as the coaches here that are talking or the clients or whoever's listening to this, open your eyes. There's opportunity to help. Why would you turn it away just because you don't know about it, right?

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Amen to that. Now, you mentioned using ozone therapy in conjunction with microbiome restoration therapy. So how did you get onto that combo?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Well, I challenged myself for about 10 years to do a fecal transplant because I had read an article early in the 2000 about a guy who was, his wife was dying from Clostridium difficile and he

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Dr. Margo Roman

 was down to like 90 pounds and they didn't have anything to do. The doctor ended up giving a fecal transplant from her husband and in two days she was recovering. So I said, "Dogs eat poop anyway. Let's give them good poop." So my own personal dogs, which we call them touch of life microbiome because that's my kennel name from my standard poodles, they've been on fresh raw organic diets for 30 years, almost seven generations, never had antibiotics, been treated only with homeopathy and acupuncture and ozone.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 How do I take that preserved poop? And in my house is green and sustainable and we built it ourselves. So I know everything about this house and what's in it. And the property was seven acres of virgin woods. So there's never been any chemicals in the yard. So having that kind of resource, I thought, "Might as well use my own dogs." So I started doing it and each case was like miracles. That's why I'm calling the book, The Miracle of the Microbiome because it was like, "How did that happen? Oh my God, that's amazing." So when you have those beautiful things with something as simple as poop,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 but I was doing rectal ozone before I did the fecal transplant to stimulate the column or cells of the colon to reduce inflammation of the colon. I never thought about how I was going to kill off the biofilm in the gut, but that's what I was doing, the competition there. So I allowed the microbiome to be put in right where I put the same gas. So I sort of cleared the walls by killing the bacteria that was on the walls and putting all good stuff in.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Amazing. And that's a concept that I think many of us don't speak enough about. And this idea that there is a biofilm that really is preventing change from happening. And that stuff is incredibly difficult to break down.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 I can remember years ago doing several biofilm protocols. It was unpleasant and involved a lot of digestive enzymes. And this is bad. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and so this is before ozone was really readily available, that would have been a whole lot simpler for sure.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 Yeah. I mean, can you get to the biofilm that's like in the small intestines, like the SIBO or something, and you get that with rectal ozone and drinking oral microbiome,

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Dr. Margo Roman

 you could do it probably with ozone capsules. Yes. Bone capsules and having them break open into the small intestines. There's just, why would I use more antibiotics if I'm trying to rebalance? And that's what really gets me crazy, is that when they do fecal transplants in humans, they put them on metronidazole and vancomycin, which people are so sick from it. And instead of using something that actually helps bring more oxygen to the intestines and the colon cells and the columnar cells, and allows this to heal versus just throwing more toxic stuff at them.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Right on. And I've been through that process and it's very unpleasant to say the least.

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 But one of the other things too, I think that ozone therapy is being used to support sort of normal immunoregulation and just improve vitality and aging pets. How are you finding that concept in terms of supporting pets as they age?

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Dr. Margo Roman

 I think it's a wonderful therapy and everybody should have an ozone generator. My mother is 96 and I got her an ozone generator 15 years ago and she calls it her fountain of youth and she would drink a glass of make ozonated water and then she would drink it. She said she would clean her whole house out.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 She's using now some ozonated glycerin and stuff now too. But just as an example, when COVID hit, I told my mom, "I can't go to Florida to take care of you. I can't go down there if something happens. You need to do your ozone every day." So she was making water every three days because she could keep in the refrigerator and she was drinking her ozone water and brushing her teeth and putting in her water. So she did that for about a month and then she went to the dentist and the hygienist came out of her mouth and said, "In my entire career, I've never seen somebody who at that time she was 86. 86 years old or 90..." No, she was 91, 91. "91 years old who has teeth like yours? Your gums are amazing. There's no inflammation. How do you do that?" She said, "I'm putting ozone in my water pick and cleaning around my gum line." What is negative about that? Why should a veterinary board be attacking somebody who's trying to help somebody stay healthier and take care of their animal's health and at the same time they can do it for themselves?

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Dr. Ruth Roberts

 And let's talk about that a little bit. You've been pioneering this field for over 22 years and my friend, you have hit some massive roadblocks and earlier when we were talking, you said at this point your case is actually now going to the Supreme Court. But talk about sort of the difficulties you've experienced with the veterinary boards and all of the shenanigans.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 It is shenanigans. It's also prejudice and it's also vindictive. And I'm happy to explain it because it's very, very important.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 We talked about my horse and him surviving.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 And I stood up and I said, "I'm not putting him to sleep. I want to do something more for this horse who has cancer, but I think there's other ways of helping him." And of course, he lived two and a half years and I tried to talk to them. They wouldn't talk to me because they had made the decision that he was going to die from cancer and we should put him to sleep right away. Two and a half years of survival to me is significant.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 And having your you told at a university who says that they are looking at everything and they are the best, telling you the only choice you have is euthanasia really bothered me because I wondered how many other people didn't have the background to question it. And so I started to want to have a hearing with the local, not local, but with our Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association. And they were afraid to touch tufts. They were afraid to go to the university.

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Dr. Margo Roman

 And I was going to, and this is another piece of it, a year later, they had a lecture on the hazards of feeding raw food. Why you should never give your animal a raw diet. This is in 2005.

[01:30:43:11 - 01:32:56:19]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And I called ahead and people, clients were calling me and saying, "We're going. We want you to listen and just get the..." And I wanted to find out why it was so hazardous to feed raw diet. I mean, animals have been eating raw diets forever, you know, in the woods and whatever. So anyway, I wanted to hear what it was doing. And so I dressed up in a suit, very professional and a few of my clients. And they come up to me and said, "You can't come in here." And I said, "What do you mean I can't come in here?" I said, "There's no CE. There's no registration. You didn't..." I called ahead. They said, "Everybody's welcome." And they said, "If you come in here, we're going to have you arrested." And I said, "For what?" I said, "I'm not doing it. I just want to listen to the lecture." And they said, "You can't come in here." And I said, "That's... You can't do that. That's civil rights violation." I mean, I'm... You know, it's not like I'm holding placards saying, you know, you know... So they said, "If you don't leave, now we're handcuffing you." And I was like, "Are you kidding me?" So I started walking out. More of my clients are coming in. They say, "We're going to put a mustache and a wig on you and you're going in." And I said, "You know, I'd get arrested for anti-war, but I'm not sure about chicken wings." So I went to... You know, I went and I called my husband. And my husband is now retired, but he's a federal prosecutor. And he said, "They can't do that to you. That's civil rights violation." I said, "I know." So I called the dean of the vet school and his doctor... It was Dean Kosh. And I called him and I had been on faculty there for 25 years. Okay? I had been a faculty member there. And I said, "You just don't threaten people with arrest to coming to a public lecture." I said, "You're funded by the state. You're funded by federal money. You're funded by Vermont and New Hampshire and Rhode Island." I said, "You can't just tell somebody you're going to arrest him for coming to a public lecture." And he said to me, I quote, "You sue us. We're going to squish you like a bug. We have so much money. We have such deep pockets. We are going to out hire attorneys and we're going to say terrible things about you. And for 21 years, that has been going on all the time. The veterinary board has been attacking me every little thing, finding something. I didn't write down an 1130 phone call by my bedside to tell them to go to Tufts. I had medical records that are...

[01:32:58:00 - 01:34:41:02]

Dr. Margo Roman

 Wow. So it's been evil. It's been evil. And I've spent over $1 million defending the right to practice integrative medicine. So that case cost about $300,000 with not writing down the... It's just ridiculous. You try to stand up and they would never go after anybody else who didn't do that. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't. And then they would fabricate stories and make them... And you'd show evidence that it was completely wrong and they wouldn't listen to the stuff. They wouldn't listen to the text from the... That the woman was threatening, driving drunk on Mass Pike and threatening to kill one of my employees who happened to be my daughter. And that is showing the person was crazy and they wouldn't even look at that. So it's very prejudiced and we stood up and we stood up and this is... At this point, we're going to Supreme Court and people can read the whole piece. I'd love everybody to read. I'd love everyone to pass this around, get their vets to understand that if we have to, as veterinarians, we take a veterinary oath. And the main core of that veterinary oath is that we need to use our scientific skills and knowledge for the benefit of animal, human and public health. And now in the environment, when you include the One Health Initiative and the World Health Organization, and the veterinarian is part of this healthcare team to help protect the public and the environment and everything else. And the veterinary board in Massachusetts, we use that as our reasoning and our reason for doing what we do. And their statement was, "We do not believe in the veterinary oath. It's just an oath."

[01:34:42:15 - 01:34:51:06]

Dr. Margo Roman

 So what do we have? Wow. Okay. What do we have if we have a veterinary oath that tells us to do this and we can't do it?

[01:34:52:08 - 01:35:43:06]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And so that's why we're going to Supreme Court because we're defending the right... You know this, you had a cat that had ringworm, you're not going to tell the owner, "Don't worry about it." You say, "Don't touch that hair. Wash your ears please. Wash your arms. If you see a lesion on your body that looks sort of like this, pay attention to it. Go to a dermatologist." I'm not going to say, "Come in to me and I'm going to treat you with ketoconazole and I'm going to treat your family." I never do that, but I want to make sure they know. But what they say, because I used integrative medicine as my treatment that I was practicing human medicine. No, I was educating the owner how to take care of their animal in the beginning of the pandemic, understanding that what ozone can do for their animal if they get a coronavirus or they get an infection.

[01:35:44:21 - 01:36:01:06]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Right on. And honestly, I mean, in that example about ringworm, you actually are remiss and in a malpractice situation, if you do not tell the pet parent something you can get to, this is a zoonotic disease. Exactly.

[01:36:01:06 - 01:36:09:19]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And we at the pandemic, they felt it was from bats. So does that mean it's zoonotic if it goes from animal to human? Absolutely.

[01:36:10:21 - 01:36:30:10]

Dr. Margo Roman

 So then we were finding it and then of course, they were saying, "No, animals can't get it." I'm like, "Where do they make these statements? They don't know." And then of course we were finding it in cats and we were finding it in ferrets and we were finding it in dogs and we were finding it in cows,

[01:36:32:04 - 01:37:41:04]

Dr. Margo Roman

 they were finding the coronavirus. I mean, we were finding it everywhere. So why do we have to not have a tool that can get rid of it and fear it out? And so I had a cat in 2004 that came to me, a kitten, it was just a kitten. And the kitten was like eight weeks, seven weeks old from a cattery in Maine. And the woman got the kitten and it didn't look great, but it didn't look sick, but she brought it to me and I said, "No, it looks like it's coming down with a little respiratory thing, but let me give it some ozone." So I gave it some subq ozone and two days later, she calls me and said, "The cat is really, really sick." And I just called the cattery in Maine. They have 30 cats there, 15 have already died and the other 15 are dying or going to be euthanized. And they assumed it was a coronavirus or some type of serious calycea virus, but it killed everybody so fast that I thought it's probably coronavirus, right? So anyway, I went ahead, I had her come and say, "Don't come in my building, took all my ozone generator and oxygen every outside, put the carrier in a plastic

[01:37:42:08 - 01:39:19:21]

Dr. Margo Roman

 garbage bag, ran ozone for about a minute and this kitten was choking." So we opened it all up and there was like, no, the suvius, it was like pouring out of this little guy's nose and mouth and everything. We cleaned her all up and she was better. She seemed like she could actually breathe. So about an hour, less than an hour later, she was driving on the way home where she lives. She heard the cat choking again, she pulled over the side of the road and she said the same thing was happening, but it looked like vermicelli, like all the bronchioles were just discharging and the sinuses. And she actually saw it coming out of the ears. That stuff was coming out of the ears. I had never ever seen that, right? But they showed during the COVID, they were finding coronavirus in the ear canals of people, humans. So it was like, oh my God. So I have taken bioterrorism and preparedness in the 90s and so I wrote up a piece for my clients on how we were going to protect our clinic. And I mentioned this cat with coronavirus and I said ozone could be a possible cure for coronavirus. Not that it is a cure for human COVID, but it's a possible cure for coronavirus. And that's what they took my license. They said you're practicing human medicine. I didn't treat any people. I was telling them how to have all of these examples through animals. And if I had told them to get vaccinated and take antibiotics, they would have said zero if I was a conventional vet.

[01:39:22:16 - 01:39:42:06]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So it's astonishing. Well, thank you for standing up and standing up and standing up. I cannot imagine the emotional and mental anguish this has created for you over the years of literally being persecuted. That is...

[01:39:42:06 - 01:40:39:03]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And you see my gray hair, I mean, it is probably there. I see all these wrinkles. This is all part of that. And I'm laughing at it, but it's very painful. And they know that. They figure they'll wear me down so much. I'll just throw my license into the vat and say, "Forget it." But I love my profession. I love being a veterinarian. I love helping animals. I love thinking of other ways to do it except euthanasia. But if the university says the only thing you can do is euthanasia and you question that, you are... Something's wrong with you, because we know everything, right? And I would not want them to do that for my animal or I wouldn't want them to do for somebody to say there's nothing else you could do. And they've never taken an acupuncture course or homeopathic course or know anything about herbs or haven't done ozone or haven't done microbiome. They know nothing of that. And they are the authority to tell you to kill someone. That to me is really sad,

[01:40:40:04 - 01:41:12:06]

Dr. Margo Roman

 really. Amen to that. And that's where people like yourself who are training pet owners and pet coaches, that there's another choice here. If the veterinarian doesn't know these choices, then you should not make the nive the options. And that's where I think everyone can be helping each other. Veterinarians should lean on people that have had other training instead of saying, "Don't go there because I don't know it and I'm going to look like I don't know something." I don't know a problem. I don't know a problem.

[01:41:12:06 - 01:41:41:05]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Yes. Right on. And that's it. And so for those of you listening, we're both here to tell you there is always another option. It may not help your animal live forever, but what if that animal lived two months longer, six months longer, 12 months longer, 18 months longer than you'd been told and lived in a high quality of life?

[01:41:42:05 - 01:41:43:17]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Is that worth it?

[01:41:43:17 - 01:41:57:06]

Dr. Margo Roman

 You all need that choice. And I've had some that have lived seven years, and I even have one that lived almost 10 years after Tufts said euthanizing. So what do you do? What do you tell people?

[01:41:58:11 - 01:42:25:20]

Dr. Margo Roman

 I find that if you see something, say something. If you see it happening over and over again and you don't tell somebody, that's denying information. I think it's not right. But if you don't have an open mind and as soon as somebody says, "Oh, acupuncture," and they go, "Oh, that's voodoo," and you're going to bleed the animal out, you're not going to have a receptive brain to even open your eyes to think about opportunity.

[01:42:26:21 - 01:42:32:04]

Dr. Margo Roman

 I was the first woman to take the veterinary acupuncture course in 1975.

[01:42:33:18 - 01:42:48:22]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And boy, did they thought I was doing voodoo and was I crazy at that point, putting needles into animals. But it's now, oh, thank God, acupuncture has been very much accepted. And so it's really, so...

[01:42:48:22 - 01:43:01:20]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Yeah. One step at a time. And this is the beauty in your career. You've seen things that you were called a voodoo whack job for become more mainstream and acceptable.

[01:43:02:23 - 01:43:31:02]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Unfortunately, many of our colleagues have not caught up with that information. But there is boatloads of science about the efficacy of acupuncture in humans and dogs. There's boatloads of science in terms of microbiome research. I mean, it's just, you are truly at the front of the curve and unfortunately have borne the brunt of different modalities becoming accepted and understood.

[01:43:32:03 - 01:43:44:19]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 So my deep gratitude for all you have done and all you have withstood, because it just is obscene and absurd. All you're trying to do is help.

[01:43:44:19 - 01:44:14:14]

Dr. Margo Roman

 That's for saying that because I'm doing this because I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't just stop because I feel like I've done... When you have your own animal survive and you see another animal survive and the owners are so grateful that they got... They thought was going to be another two or three months. And then it's three years now that they have the dog there. That's what feeds my soul. That's what makes me want to say, "I got to stand up."

[01:44:15:17 - 01:44:59:03]

Dr. Margo Roman

 And I'm telling people, I need the money to keep going to the Supreme Court. We need to stand up for this. This is much, much bigger than all of us. And cumulatively, we can make that keep me in being able to pay for the legal parts of this because that's... I'm nervous about that, but somebody's got to do it. And I do have a give, send and go piece that I'm... And I think people don't understand how expensive it is to get lawyers that can go to Supreme Courts. It's just get somebody... I was hoping to find somebody to do it pro bono if they loved animals and they could see the value of it, have not been able to find somebody to do that. So having to...

[01:45:01:07 - 01:45:22:23]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 And they are hideously expensive. Yeah. Well, Dr. Roman, I am again so honored that you took this time with me today. Very excited about the veterinary medical ozone and the miracle of the microbiome books coming out. So where can folks find you? I think you've got mashvet.com there.

[01:45:22:23 - 01:45:25:04]

Dr. Margo Roman

 From the clinic, exactly.

[01:45:26:23 - 01:45:59:11]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Well, Dr. Roman, again, thank you for your time. Thanks for telling us about your journey, the successes you found, the hardships you've unfortunately been facing. And for everybody out there listening, look forward to another episode of Healing Tales coming up soon. We've got so many amazing people that are sharing their insights, their information with you, because this is what we need to do. We need to share the information and get it out there so that people know there are options.

[01:46:00:19 - 01:46:18:22]

Dr. Margo Roman

 Exactly. And Ruth, thank you so much for having these kinds of programs, giving people information, getting them to explore opportunities, because if they're only told one thing and they're never given another option, they will never know that there was another thing they could do. And you don't want anybody having regrets.

[01:46:18:22 - 01:46:24:18]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Right on. All right, take good care and we'll talk soon. Ciao.

[01:46:24:18 - 01:46:42:07]

Dr. Ruth Roberts

 Thanks for listening to Healing Tales where pet parents become healers, one tail wag at a time. Want more tools and support? Head to DrRuthRoberts.com. Until next time, trust your gut, question the noise, and keep showing up for your pet.